I går leste jeg ferdig boka med Peter Seewalds intervju med pave Benedikt; mye var interessant, men det var ikke alle spørsmål jeg syntes var like aktuelle for meg selv. Som mange kan tenke seg, var jeg interessert i å lese hva pave Benedikt sa om liturgien. Det var ikke så mye, men ganske interessant. Først sier han noe om hvor fokus i liturgien må være:
… The essential point is to avoid celebrating the liturgy as an occasion for the community to exhibit itself under the pretext that it is important for everyone to involve himself, though in the end, then, only the «self» is really important. Rather, the decisive thing is that we enter into something that is much greater. That we can get out of ourselves, as it were, and into the wide open spaces. For the same reason, it is also very important that the liturgy itself not be tinkered with in some way.
Så sier han litt om liturgiens historie og tradisjon:
Liturgy, in truth, is an event by means of which we let ourselves be introduced into the expansive faith and prayer of the Church. … (recognizing) its historical character. Which means recognizing that someone didn’t just one day invent the liturgy, but that it has been growing organically since the time of Abraham. These kinds of elements from the earliest times are still present in the liturgy.
Til slutt sier han litt om hvorfor han åpnet for videre bruk av den gamle messen:
… My main reason for making the previous form more available was to preserve the internal continuity of Church history. We cannot say: Before, everything was wrong, but now everything is right; for in a community in which prayer and the Eucharist are the most important things, what was earlier supremely sacred cannot be entirely wrong. The issue was internal reconciliation with our own past, the intrinsic continuity of faith and prayer in the Church.